Some top-secret video from a Tennessee Volunteers practice has leaked out.
Earlier in the season, SwimSwam’s Amanda Smith was watching swimming videos, and noticed the peculiar top-arm breakout that the Tennessee Volunteers have been using. Read more about those here.
At the time, we were teased a little bit by Tennessee Associate coach Tyler Fenwick with a “wait until you see our backstroke breakouts.”
Well, now we can all see them, thanks to some more sleuth work from Amanda. This video, posted on the Coach’s Eye website, shows a Tennessee swimmer demonstrating their unorthodox breakout. Many, many coaches believe that kicking on one’s side is faster, but Tennessee has taken it to the extreme with swimmers actually surfacing on their sides before their breakout stroke.
This time around, Fenwick says that “we’re just trying to ride that line and snap into the breakout,” emphasizing the smooth penetration of the water’s surface, followed by a more pronounced rotation than normal on the first stroke.
“It’s allowed our swimmers to carry speed through the breakout more effectively,” he said of early results.
We haven’t been able to obtain any race footage of the Volunteers have been using it in the meets to see if it’s given them a visible advantage over their opponents, but Fenwick says they’ve been using it all year, and it’s something we’ll be watching for in two weeks at the SEC Championships in Athens, Georgia.
For what it’s worth, Tennessee’s women’s backstroke group has quietly been developed into a very deep and very impressive group. For example, Lauren Solernou topped defending NCAA runner-up Sinead Russell in the teams’ dual meets last weekend.
This not a new concept – Bill Boomer & Milt Nelms worked on this in the early 2000 with Natalie Coughlin .
It makes sense – holding your body for as long as possible in a longer streamlined position making the most of the underwater phase .
The top arm exit works.
From what I understand, the idea of the top-arm pulling is not about propulsion. It is more about keeping a streamlined position through the exit so that when the swimmers surface they can initiate propulsion with the bottom arm.
As coaches, we have the tendency to think that the fastest way to move through the water is creating as much propulsion as possible. Perhaps the concept of drag has gotten left behind somewhat. Drag is a limiting factor to any propulsion created by the swimmer.
Naturally, during a race it is not prudent to do something a swimmer is uncomfortable with. But anything that might be better is worth taking a look at. Misty Hyman’s coach said that… Read more »
I love it…look at number of responses, it gets us coaches thinking…something we need to do desperately as we go into rio!
To be clear the relative position to vertical of the SHOULDERS not the hips determine legality. Excerpts below from both USA Swimming and NCAA rules. While the viewing angle of the video is not the best it is a very close call on the exit as to whether the top shoulder is past vertical towards the breast. If stroke is being judged from end of lanes vs sides shoulder position will be readily apparent to the official on whether it is legal or not. Tennessee swimmers are pushing the edge here clearly.
USA SwimmingTechnical Rules
101.4 BACKSTROKE
.2 Stroke — The swimmer shall push off on his back and continue swimming on the back throughout the race.
… Read more »
Since I don’t see it mentioned already (if I missed it, I apologize), I wanted to mention that the water you would be pulling with that arm angle cannot be very beneficial for grabbing and moving forward. Water that close to the surface, especially if there is any chop from either her or neighboring lanes, would hold a lot of air and not give you the same pull that a deeper catch would.
That said, I guess each swimmer can try it and see the results. It is pretty easy to take a few 15m splits of each and find out whether or not there is a difference.
wonder why their best male backstroker doesn’t use this breakout?
But I am not at all curious why the best female backstroker does not use it. They’re basically playing a different sport.
Doing dolphin kicks while on your side isnt exactly new. If youre curious, go to YouTube and search for race footage of the mens 400 medley relay from the 1998 World Champs. In that video you will see Michael Klim of AUS dolphin kicking on his side before he pops up to do butterfly.
I realize that it isn’t new, but more swimmers are doing it these days and not all officials can recognize the difference between what is legal and illegal.